The Great Gatsby Green Light Analysis

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Beautifully written, the conclusion to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby leaves readers pondering over the possibility of recreating the past and with a glimmer of hope. Throughout the novel, Gatsby strives to relive the past and marry his true love from years past, Daisy. Gatsby has “come a long way to the blue lawn,” where Daisy lives and he prays that they will reunite (Fitzgerald 180). When Nick first arrives to West Egg, he sees Gatsby staring at a green light in the distance entranced with wonder and awe at the light on Daisy’s dock. Fitzgerald uses the green light to symbolize Gatsby’s hope of being with Daisy once more even though the time with her is a memory and cannot be recreated. However, even after the tragic death of Gatsby, some…show more content…
[…] Why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). In these words, readers are aware of Gatsby’s hope to be with Daisy once again and to recreate the love he had with her. As described in the last passage of the novel, Gatsby’s “dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” (Fitzgerald 180). Gatsby has found Daisy and believes that finding her is enough to allow them to be together. He does not recognize that Daisy has moved on and thus his time with her can only be a memory. In chapter five, when Gatsby meets with Daisy for the first time in five years, he clumsily knocks over a clock, symbolizing how he is clumsy in his attempt to stop time and gain the love of Daisy again. Gatsby is “consumed with wonder at her presence” and is “running down like an overwound clock” (Fitzgerald 92). Gatsby devotes all of his time to being reunited with Daisy. He becomes overwound when his five year search for her results in the realization that his dream has not and will not meet his expectations. As a result, Gatsby attempts to re-create the past. Fitzgerald illustrates, “So we beat on, like boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” fighting to make a dream come true that has already passed (Fitzgerald 180). Gatsby is the boat, pushing, against the waves, to his future with Daisy failing to realize that had he stopped fighting against the current, he would have sailed peacefully home…show more content…
“He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled under the night” (Fitzgerald 180). Fitzgerald’s use of the word “obscurity” implies that Gatsby’s dream was lost to the dark before his arrival at West Egg and before he glimpses the green light on Daisy’s dock. Fitzgerald writes, “He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever” (Fitzgerald 153). The author’s figurative language here, describes the longing Gatsby has to hold on to the memories of Daisy. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald intentionally uses figurative language and long, descriptive sentences to create a dream-like and hope-filled dimension, which represents how Gatsby views Daisy as a dream. The overly descriptive passages expressing almost nothing leave an ambiguous and ghostly tone and allow readers to interpret the novel for themselves, as shown in the closing

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